


The Detective Who Loved Tom Gordon

by whatyoufish4



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hope, Male-Female Friendship, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 14:44:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12584148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatyoufish4/pseuds/whatyoufish4
Summary: Watson can't find her phone.





	The Detective Who Loved Tom Gordon

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the AllHallowsReadWithMsP challenge. Prompt: "What is [character's] favorite scary book? If they don’t like scary books, why not?"

_"Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.”_

\- Chesterton & Gaiman 

* * * * *

Her phone was missing again.

Watson frowned as she checked behind one last pile of files in the study – where, of course, her phone was not located. It was rare for her to misplace her phone. She’d never had a profession where being in close proximity to a phone or pager hadn’t been a constant requirement, and now that phones could double as research computers, she was always subconsciously aware of where she’d set hers: on the table, in her purse, by her bedside.

It had started last week. She’d taken a break from perusing a boxful of a shell corporation’s tax returns in order to descend to the kitchen and make herself a sandwich. She’d been distracted, wondering what toll Everyone might extract from Sherlock this time, and when she’d returned with her peanut butter and honey to the box of files, she wasn’t thinking about phones. When the sound of a received text message trilled from the kitchen, she’d been mildly surprised to find her cell sitting next to the blender; she didn’t remember taking it with her to make the sandwich. But she’d chalked it up to distraction.

But over the next few days, it happened again, and again. She’d glance up from a book she was reading on the sofa, or pause during a commercial break in a game she was watching in the media room, or wake up and stretch and glance over to the chair beside her bed – and each time, the place where she had been sure she’d set her phone was empty. When she went searching for it, she inevitably found it in some reasonable location, on a table or next to the sofa or sitting in her purse – but she knew, with growing certainty, that it was not the location in which she’d last left it.

It didn’t vex her as much as it should. Possibly because there was no indication that any personal information – texts, voice messages, photos – had been disturbed. Possibly because she’d grown just that used to her flatmate. But she’d be lying if she had said she hadn’t been growing increasingly curious. It had been going on just long enough that she knew it was unlikely to be part of some larger game or challenge. But then why?

Watson made her way into the kitchen and paused. The hour was late, and the kitchen was dark, save for the sliver of light making its way through the crack in the door leading to Sherlock’s bedroom. She was not used to seeing lights there; when the room was occupied, the door was inevitably closed.

She padded on bare feet towards his door, and tapped lightly with a knuckle against the wood. “Sherlock?” she called softly, but there was no answer, and after a moment, she nudged the door open and peered inside.

Sherlock was stretched out on his worn leather sofa, eyes closed, still wearing his suit jacket and dress slacks from the day’s work. His arms were folded tightly across his chest, with both his head and his stockinged feet – Watson noted he was wearing the socks she’d given him for the holidays last year, with the little smiling tortoises on them – resting on pillows. He was wearing a set of earbuds, and his face was a mask of intense concentration.

Her eyes briefly followed the wire of the earbuds. They were plugged into her phone, which was resting on his chest.

She walked to the foot of the couch. “Sherlock?” she said again, and when he failed to answer her, she moved closer and gently prodded his shoulder.

His eyes flew open as he jumped – a rather impressive feat to manage while lying flat on his back. Watson drew back, startled, but then had to smile. “Were you asleep? Because that would make the score eleven hundred to two.”

Tugging the earbuds from his ears, he sat up on the couch, looking rather guilty. “No, I wasn’t – I mean, you didn’t. Wake me, that is. As I wasn’t asleep.” He blinked twice, hard. “What time is it?”

Watson arched a slightly puzzled eyebrow. “Almost midnight. I’m going to bed, but I wanted to find my phone first.”

Sitting ramrod straight, eyes averted, he pulled the earbuds from the jack and then thrust out an arm, proffering her phone. The screen had gone dark. She took it, then crossed her arms easily across her chest, tucking the phone beneath her elbow and waiting.

“You want to tell me why you had my phone?” she asked at last, when he remained silent. “I know yours is working, I’ve seen you use it. What have you been doing?”

“I’ve ... been … using one of the apps.” He still wasn’t looking at her.

“Okay, I guess.” She pocketed the phone in her robe, crossed her arms again. “Any reason why you didn’t just put the app on your own phone? Or, you know, _ask_ me if you could use mine?”

“My phone is incapable of using that particular app, hence my need to borrow yours. As for why I did not acquire permission, I refer you to the tiresome but no less accurate adage about the preferability of begging forgiveness.”

She could have just pulled the phone back out and turned on the screen to see what app he’d had pulled up. And yet something about his mannerism made her want to give him a chance to explain. Besides, he _had_ taken her phone without asking; an explanation was the least he could do. “And what, exactly, will I be forgiving you for?”

“I was, erm. Listening to one of your audiobooks.”

His words had come out in a rushed mumble and she found herself blinking. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “You were listening to my audiobooks?”

“ _One_ audiobook, singular.” He gestured with a raised forefinger for emphasis.

She was so baffled, all she could manage was a single, “Why?”

“We were on that stakeout in Flushing two weeks ago. You left to get takeout and failed to take your phone with you. I hardly need complete silence to focus my attention on such mundane trivialities as a stakeout, so I picked up your phone to …” He faltered slightly.

“To –?” she prompted.

“To change your ringtone to something from the Justin Bieber oeuvre,” he admitted, and though he did not smile, he glanced up at her, his features relaxing slightly. “Fortunately for your musical sensibilities, I got distracted by the audiobook you’d been listening to. I started playing it myself.”

“So, after I got back with the takeout …”

“I had become engrossed.” He darted a glance at her, his eyes filled with that particular brittle expression of vulnerability that let her know he was dancing on the edge of showing her some part of himself he did not easily reveal. “I wanted to know how it ended.”

She sat down on the edge of the low table across from the sofa and considered. His posture relaxed further as she sat, correctly deducing that she wasn’t cross with him. “What story?”

“What?”

“What story are you listening to?”

“It’s unusual for me, you understand,” said Sherlock, quickly. “I don’t read for pleasure. Or rather, I should say, the pleasure I receive from reading is in the acquirement of fresh knowledge and understanding. I find the reading of fiction to be a tedious endeavor, to say the least. It’s all the more ironic that this particular novel should blend a love of sports with the story, as if combining two superfluous activities would somehow negate their respective uselessness.” He was on his feet now, pacing, while she sat on the edge of the table watching him. “Add in the element of magical horror, and the entire enterprise becomes ridiculous. There are, after all, no such thing as supernatural forest monsters. Although,” he conceded suddenly, “I suppose there is an element of usefulness to the description of wilderness survival skills.”

Watson let the silence stretch out until his pacing had stopped and he dared another glance at her. She drank in the look of surprise on his face when he saw the uninhibited delight on her own.

“You’re reading _The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon!_ ” she laughed. “One of my very favorites.”

“My mother was a fan of Stephen King’s early works,” Sherlock mumbled. “I can’t say I’d ever heard of this one before.”

“It’s one of his newer ones – well, from the past twenty years. King’s had a long career. I’m so glad you’re liking it!” She grinned at him. “Did you get to the part with the deer yet?”

He looked pained. “My descent into the cheap thrills of mass-market entertainment should not be applauded, Watson.”

“Look, we’re having a nice moment discussing a story that’s important to me, okay? Don’t ruin it.” She glared at him until he sat back on the edge of the sofa. “It’s a great story with a lot to say. The struggle for survival, the strength in family, the grace of the game –” She glanced over at him and saw him, with exaggerated faux-politeness, not quite checking his eyes from rolling out of his head in disbelief. “What?”

“The majority of those who read fictional thrillers do so in a misguided attempt to find shock and awe in their otherwise mundane existences. I fail to understand how the gimmicks of an imaginary tale could ever compare with the the absurdities and impossibilities that take place in the real world.” He sighed. “Furthermore, I find myself disappointed in my own ability to be taken in by said gimmicks.”

“They’re not gimmicks,” said Watson, leaning back and crossing her arms. “They’re metaphors. They’re _about_ something.”

“Yes, of course. The supernatural forest monster is clearly a stand-in for the author’s issues with his father.”

Watson raised both eyebrows and pulled her phone back out of her pocket. If he wanted to do this, they were going to do it. “Do you know what this book is about?”

“The retention of details is hardly my weak suit –”

She tapped her phone case. “What’s the book about?”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Sherlock rocked slightly in his seat, with that expression on his face that suggested he was either fighting for patience or attempting to condense the racing of his mind long enough to get a coherent statement out. “An eleven-year-old girl goes hiking with her brother and divorcee mother on a segment of the Appalachian Trail. She gets separated, tries for a shortcut, and ends up lost in the woods.”

Watson made little _go-on_ motions with one hand.

His eyes were pained. “There’s the various survival hardships she faces – dehydration, hunger, illness, exposure. The batteries dying on her portable handheld radio.”

She wondered briefly if he’d ever had a Walkman as a child. “Okay, that’s what happens. But it’s not what the book’s _about._ ”

He gestured in return: _as you say._

She leaned forward, tapping her phone again, not about to be thrown off the point. “It’s about a kid who feels lost long before she ends up in the woods. Her parents are separated, her brother’s angry all the time, the family’s up and moved to Maine – she feels like all she has to count on is herself. Well, that and her love of baseball.”

He was quiet for a moment. “She’s not just lost,” Sherlock said at last, and there was something different in his voice this time. “She’s being actively stalked. Preyed upon.”

“By the God of the Lost, right,” said Watson, remembering. “It colors the whole book. She’s struggling to survive, to be _found,_ and she’s got this monster on her heels –”

“A monster,” said Sherlock, “From which she is defenseless.” His gaze was darting towards her, then skittering away again, and suddenly Watson felt like the greenest detective for not deducing his undercurrent earlier.

Of course. Of _course_ he understood. King, she remembered suddenly, was a recovering addict himself.

“It’s always there,” he went on. “Every step of the way. One might interpret the story as suggesting it follows her, but it seems to me that it’s actually ahead of her. Waiting for her.”

For a moment, they were both silent.

“I’m kind of surprised you’ve stuck with it,” she said at last.

He glanced at her. “As I said. I wanted to see how it ended.”

“I don’t know how close you are to the end, exactly.” She folded her arms, resting her elbows on her knees. “But I think you’ll like it.”

He looked up at her, his eyes guarded, and wholly vulnerable.

“Final chapters. Bottom of the ninth, you could say. Time for our tiny heroine to face off against the monster. Except the God of the Lost’s not just a monster. This monster is the embodiment of hopelessness, I think. Fear made literal. And here’s Trisha, and all she has to face off against that monster is a little bit of courage and a beaten-up Walkman. But her Walkman’s what she’s been using to keep her connected to the one thing she loves most. Baseball’s not just a hobby for her, you know; it’s a vocation. Maybe you can relate.” A smile tugged at Watson’s lips, not unkindly. “That’s the thing about a calling, isn’t it? It’s a part of you, but not in the way we always think. We don’t live to follow our calling. We follow our calling to help us live.”

He had to clear his throat to get the words out. “Are you quite sure you didn’t miss your calling as an English professor, Watson?”

“I’ve just spent a lot of time defending a love of baseball to naysayers.” She came to her feet. “Nobody really reads Stephen King just for the ‘thrills.’ It’s more than that. All stories are. You know, King once said that fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “And what truth lies inside the lie of this tale, Watson?”

“That we all have a monster in the woods waiting for us. And that the monster can be beaten.” She pressed the phone back into his hand. “I think that’s a story we all need to be told sometimes.”

They looked at each other for a heartbeat, and then she left, but stood in the shadows of the kitchen peeking through the half-open door. She waited until she saw him press the ear buds back into place before lying back on his couch once more, her phone clutched in his hand.

Then she smiled, and ascended the stairs to bed.


End file.
